Kévin Bray (Corbie, FR, 1989) is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher based in Amsterdam, working at the intersection of myth, media archaeology, and geopolitical storytelling. Trained at ESAAT Lille, ESAAB Nevers, Sandberg Instituut, and Rijksakademie, his practice critically examines the systems that shape perception, belief, and power, whether through technological infrastructures, folkloric frameworks, or geopolitical discourses.

Rather than treating media as neutral vessels, Bray approaches them as active agents, examining how formats, tools, and narratives not only reflect but produce reality. His work spans painting, moving image, 3D modeling, sound, and fiction, each medium treated as a language with its own syntax, politics, and hidden rules. A defining feature of his practice is the exposure of medial seams, a deliberate foregrounding of the material and ideological infrastructures that underpin representation. Using Brechtian distanciation, he disrupts passive consumption by laying bare the mechanics of construction: visible brushstrokes, rigging, code, layers, or the presets embedded in digital production. The result is not demystification for its own sake, but an invitation to critically inhabit the space between form and content, where the politics of representation become tangible. Here, in the cracks of meaning, another poetry emerges, one that reimagines fiction not as escape but as a site of negotiation, where new narratives and new ways of seeing can take root.

This reimagining of fiction extends to Bray’s exploration of myth as a technology of world-building, a means by which cultural, scientific, and political narratives naturalize ideologies, justify extraction, and script collective behavior. His projects weave together science, art history, and geopolitical critique to construct hybrid fictions that exist in the threshold between fact and fabulation. By reworking inherited stories, whether from folklore, Renaissance iconography, or contemporary media, he examines how narrative frameworks sediment into systems, shaping subjectivities, economies, and even ecological crises. The work asks: How do stories become infrastructures? What kinds of realities do they enable, or prevent?

A parallel concern is the complicity of media within attention economies, particularly the optimized flows of digital platforms. Through fragmented narratives, glitches, and exposed production processes, Bray introduces frictional elements that resist seamless consumption. A video might annotate itself in real time; a sculpture could embed its own blueprints; an installation may project its documentation as part of the work. These strategies are not merely formal but political, aiming to disrupt the passive spectatorship demanded by social media, surveillance capitalism, and late-stage platform logics. Ultimately, Bray’s practice positions storytelling as a site of contestation, a means to dismantle and reassemble the narratives that structure reality. By interlacing myth, science, and geopolitics, and by exposing the material conditions of media, his work models a critical literacy: one that might read against the grain, resist imposed narratives, and reimagine the stories that govern them. In an era where media doesn’t just represent the world but actively scripts it, his practice insists on art as a counter-script. Here, the seams of reality can be opened, examined, and rewoven.

Shorter version:

Kévin Bray’s work exists at the intersection of myth, media archaeology, and geopolitical storytelling, exploring how narratives, whether folkloric, scientific, or algorithmic, shape perception, justify power, and script collective behavior. Working across painting, video, 3D modeling, and fiction, he treats each medium as both a tool and a subject, exposing the material and ideological seams of representation.

Central to his practice is the construction of hybrid myths: stories that bridge ancient allegories with contemporary crises.

These narratives are research-driven yet speculative, designed to disrupt passive consumption by making the mechanics of storytelling visible, whether through glitches, exposed production pipelines, or fragmented structures.

By laying bare the frameworks that govern how we see and believe, the work invites viewers to critically inhabit the gap between myth and media. In an era where stories don’t just describe reality but actively construct it, this practice positions art as a counter-script, a space to dismantle, examine, and reimagine the narratives that shape our world.